Although the class of 2027 still has nearly a year before graduation, some commercial space enterprises have already started reaching out to them with job offers.

Since July, a rocket company has launched its campus recruitment drive for the class of 2027, while simultaneously conducting a new round of social recruitment. In addition to positions in overall design, structures, propulsion, control, and engines, the company is also hiring for roles in measurement and control, production testing, quality assurance, and supply chain management. Satellite companies are expanding their recruitment needs to include manufacturing, measurement, operation, control, and data applications. Recruitment criteria frequently emphasize requirements such as "over three years," "over five years," and "industry experience." Some positions, such as liquid rocket engine design, offer monthly salaries ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 yuan.

At a commercial space industry conference held in Shenzhen this March, a corporate executive openly discussed the talent shortage: "Right now, in Beijing, experienced technical personnel in liquid rocket development—for both overall design and key systems—are in high demand and fiercely competed over." A report by China Business Network at the time also highlighted that talent reserves and technological breakthroughs had become key topics of discussion among corporate representatives.

Even now, "experience" remains the most sought-after qualification in this recruitment cycle.

In the aerospace industry, experience is highly valued, but it is not solely determined by the number of years worked. An engineer gains engineering judgment only after participating in conceptual design, conducting tests, handling anomalies, and following a model through final assembly, transition, and launch. Much of this experience cannot be rushed; it must be accumulated project by project. Therefore, when recruiting core technical personnel, companies ask very specific questions about which models a candidate has worked on, which disciplines they were responsible for, and how far they followed the project.

The first generation of entrepreneurs in China's commercial space industry benefited from a unique talent window that is now difficult to replicate.

Around 2015, when the first domestic private rocket companies were established, China already had a relatively complete aerospace industrial system. Many of the founders and core R&D personnel of early commercial rocket companies had prior experience in traditional aerospace, and the same was largely true for the commercial satellite sector. Beyond technology, they brought into their startups knowledge of how to organize a model project, how to advance testing, and the judgment formed through long-term engineering practice.

Around 2018, when media investigated Beijing's private rocket industry, they noted that some companies chose to locate in Yizhuang, largely because of its proximity to traditional aerospace research institutions, making it easier to recruit mature technical personnel. At that time, there were not as many domestic commercial rocket companies as today, and the pool of backbone personnel from the existing system was sufficient to form the initial entrepreneurial teams.

This startup approach relied on a unique industry condition: the traditional aerospace system had accumulated a sufficient talent base, while the number of commercial companies needing to form core teams was still relatively small. However, as the number of enterprises, models, and missions increased simultaneously, the original talent sources quickly became strained.

According to statistics from the Commercial Space Research Center at the China Center for Information Industry Development, by the end of 2025, there were over 600 domestic commercial space enterprises, covering industrial chain segments such as rockets, satellites, ground facilities, and application services, representing a year-on-year increase of over 20%. In the same year, China conducted 50 commercial space launches, placing 311 commercial satellites into orbit.

As the number of companies grows and model and launch missions become more frequent, mature engineers cannot simply "scale up" alongside corporate expansion.

The traditional aerospace system is not an inexhaustible talent pool. Core technical personnel often shoulder national model missions, and personnel mobility involves considerations such as declassification periods, job continuity, and corresponding management procedures. For mature engineers with stable career platforms and family arrangements, salary is not the sole determinant of whether they stay or leave. The approach of rapidly assembling a technical team by absorbing a group of traditional aerospace veterans is becoming increasingly difficult to replicate on a large scale.

Meanwhile, talent competition has extended beyond the traditional system and private enterprises to within commercial space companies themselves.

LandSpace serves as a typical example. As one of the earliest domestic private rocket companies, it has undergone development in solid rockets, liquid oxygen-methane engines, the Zhuque-2 model, and subsequent reusable rocket research. Multiple rounds of engine testing, full-scale rocket development, and flight missions have allowed such early companies to begin cultivating engineers through their own commercial models.

A decade ago, mature aerospace talent primarily moved from the traditional system to newly established private enterprises. Today, a group of engineers has accumulated most of their model experience within commercial space companies. As a result, China's commercial space industry now has a cadre of truly commercially experienced mature engineers—though their numbers still lag behind the pace of corporate and model expansion.

According to the 2025 Commercial Space Salary Guide released by Risfond based on a survey of 236 enterprises, the median annual salary for chief liquid rocket engineers has reached 820,000 yuan. Higher salaries can shift talent flows, allowing a company to temporarily fill a few key positions, but they cannot increase the total number of mature engineers in the industry, nor can they replace the trials and model missions that young engineers have yet to experience.

What the commercial space industry now lacks is not just people, but also the opportunities and mechanisms to transform newcomers into seasoned professionals.

Whether a young engineer can grow depends not on how many years they have put in, but on whether they have completed a full engineering cycle. This includes how concepts are turned into drawings, how drawings enter production, what issues arise during testing, how designs are revised, and whether they can follow a rocket to the launch site. Only by going through these stages can they make informed judgments when encountering problems in the future.

In this sense, launch frequency is also talent development speed. When model missions progress continuously, young talent has the opportunity to undergo more testing and flight experience, allowing the expertise held by a few experts to gradually solidify into data, standards, and procedures. If projects are repeatedly interrupted and teams frequently change, it becomes difficult to form a stable engineering workforce, even with constant recruitment.

Recruitment needs are also extending to the production frontlines.

Recent job postings show that the talent gap in commercial space is not limited to R&D departments; positions in process engineering, assembly, testing, quality assurance, production management, and supply chain management are also being aggressively filled. In March of this year, Wu Zhigang, Dean of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Sun Yat-sen University, mentioned in an interview with China Business Network that there is currently a notable shortage of highly skilled technical personnel proficient in core processes.

As rockets pursue higher launch frequencies and satellites move toward mass production, the handover of drawings from design departments is just the beginning. Whether processes can remain stable, how batch quality is controlled, whether suppliers can meet deadlines, and how quickly anomalies can be diagnosed all require a manufacturing team capable of steadily translating designs into products.

The talent pool for these roles can be broader. While core R&D positions in overall design, propulsion, and control rely heavily on aerospace model experience, roles in process engineering, quality assurance, precision manufacturing, and supply chain management can draw talent from high-end manufacturing sectors such as aviation, automotive, and energy equipment, followed by training through aerospace quality systems and real-world missions. Future talent supply for the commercial space industry must not only focus on a few aerospace institutions but also establish distinct development pathways for engineers, technicians, and production managers.

As mature engineers become increasingly scarce, some companies have shifted their talent development efforts even earlier.

Last summer, students from the School of Astronautics at Beihang University undertook a three-week production internship at Galactic Energy; in January of this year, Space Pioneer signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Beihang University, emphasizing joint talent cultivation, technological breakthroughs, and industry-academia-research integration. Similar collaborations are on the rise in the commercial space sector, with companies no longer waiting until graduation season to receive resumes but instead exposing students to real projects and engineering sites earlier.

However, bringing students into companies earlier only addresses the entry point. Universities can produce graduates with professional knowledge but cannot directly deliver mature engineers who have experienced a full model cycle. The subsequent journey must be undertaken by companies: whether there are continuous model missions, whether mature engineers are willing to mentor newcomers, and whether the experience gained from testing and flight remains within the organization all influence how long it takes for a newcomer to truly assume critical roles.

The talent and engineering experience accumulated over decades in China's aerospace industry once served as a readily available asset for early commercial space ventures. A decade later, this asset has supported the first generation of companies and models, but it cannot be supplied indefinitely.

To reach its full potential, the commercial space industry must establish not only its own rockets, engines, production lines, and launch pads but also an engineering system capable of continuously developing talent. In the coming years, competition among companies will not only hinge on where they can still recruit talent but also on who can guide a new generation through the full cycle of design, production, testing, and launch.

Rockets can be scheduled for annual production, but mature engineers cannot be mass-produced from recruitment lists. Rocket companies must, of course, build rockets, but they must also cultivate the talent they need, batch by batch, through real-world missions.